Dead Lilies
by Harmony Goldstar
Summary: After the battle Harry returns to his first home in Godric's Hollow. Eighteen years after its last inhabitants were killed, the house is very different from what Harry couldn't quite remember in the first place. Inspired by the song 'Dead Flowers' by Miranda Lambert. Not a songfic. Please read & review.


**A/N: Just a little something I thought of when I was listening to the radio the other day. It was inspired by the song 'Dead Flowers' by Miranda Lambert. I know the song is similes and metaphors for a love gone wrong, but the imagery stuck, and this was born! Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I own neither Harry Potter, nor 'Dead Flowers.'**

Now that the final battle was long since over, Harry Potter was able to stop and grieve. In doing so, he found that closure wouldn't come, and his nights were haunted with terror and his days with unwanted publicity. He was ready to just give up.

Nearly delirious with sleep deprivation, Harry apparated himself to Godric's Hollow. The last time he had been here Voldemort's snake had nearly killed him. But the snake was dead now, and it should be safe to visit his parents' graves. As he sat before them in the cemetery, he could hear their voices in his mind.

"Go home, Harry," they told him. Heeding their advice, he wandered from the cemetery after leaving a bunch of conjured white lilies on the grave. Not far along the busy road was his parent's house. His home for the first year of his life, and the house that his parents had died in. It seemed fitting to him to return after he had finally brought their killer to his death.

Harry approached the gate to the house. He looked all around him and saw people rushing about. No one paid him more than a glance. He put his hand on the gate and pushed it open. As he walked up the path to the house he wondered, when had his parents realized they had been betrayed? Was Voldemort standing where he, Harry stood now as his parents realized their mistake?

Shaking the morbid thoughts from his head, he continued. Harry slipped his wand out of his sleeve uttered,

"Alohomora." The lock clicked open, and Harry gently pulled the door open enough to slip inside.

"Lumos maxima." The room lit up. Stepping into his first home, Harry realized how little he had known about the place that changed his entire life. Up the stairs straight in front of him would be the bedrooms. The doorway to his left led to a sitting room, and to his right lay the dining room. He stepped into the dining room and the lights followed.

The walls were covered in peeling flowery wallpaper that had probably once been pink. It had faded to a light dusty brown. On the table there were two dust covered place settings, and one bowl and spoon. There was a booster seat in that chair. Two other chairs were pulled out slightly, like their last occupants had rushed to push them in. The fourth had been knocked to the ground. Taking another step into the room, Harry reached forward and touched the curtains. They were gray with dust. The entire room, the carpet, the walls, the furniture was coated in layers of gray dust. There was a vase of dead flowers on the table. They had been lilies, Harry noted, but now they were brown and the petals were falling off. The inside of the vase was gray as if the water had filled with dust and then evaporated.

Treading carefully through the room, Harry pushed open a door. The rusty hinges screeched when it opened and a cloud of dust rose from the floor as the door disturbed it. In the kitchen, Harry found more peeling faded wall paper and dust. There were dishes in the sink that must have been from the last meal he had eaten with his parents that Halloween night. There was even a bowl of candy. Most of the wrappers had been torn and the candy that hadn't been eaten by rodents was coated with mold and dust.

Heading through another door, Harry found himself in the living room. The once lush carpet was thickly packed with dust. He thought he saw a rat scurry from the room as he entered, but he wasn't sure. Harry brushed some dust from the arm chairs and discovered that they had been a dark red. Looking around the room, he saw toys scattered about. Those were his toys. He bent to the ground and picked up some blocks, finding no recollection of ever having played with them. There were two teacups and a sippy cup on the coffee table.

Moving toward the fireplace, Harry found a jar of floo powder and some old photographs that no longer moved and had faded to black and white. The edges curled in the picture frames. He picked each one up and brushed away the dust with his sleeve, revealing photographs of his parents, their friends and him. Most of the pictures were of him.

Above the mantle were some Halloween lights, much like Muggle Christmas lights, only they were lit by the magic of the person who conjured them. They had long since burnt out. Harry returned to the entry hall, filled with a morbid fascination to pinpoint the place where his mother and father had lost their lives and where he had been marked for a life of pain. Looking more closely at the walls in the entry hall he could see burn marks where spells had hit the walls. There was no sign that a body had ever lay here at the foot of the stairs.

Carefully, Harry began to ascend the stairs, fully aware of each creak and grown they made as he placed his weight upon them. On the left, above the living room, there was a door that was left slightly ajar. Harry entered this room first and realized that he had found his parents' bedroom. The large four poster bed was unmade, the sheets carelessly tossed back.

Harry opened the wardrobe and found sets of untouched and dust free robes that had belonged to his parents. The wardrobe was the first thing in the house that had not been touched by time. He so longed to take a cloak or robe for himself, but felt that it would disturb the eeriness of the dark empty house that had been left untouched for the past 18 years.

There were wedding pictures on the walls, and pictures of him, he found, as he dusted off the frames. He found partially eaten slippers and a nightgown that had belonged to his mother. His father's robe and nightshirt were nowhere in sight. Probably carted away for use as nesting materials for the rats, Harry thought.

With that, he moved on, peeking in the bathroom at the top of the stairs. The only thing that stood out from under the dust was an ornate mirror that even through the dust, Harry could tell was gold. Patches were cleared where the dust had fallen away and it reflected the room in broken patches. Harry continued down the hall to the rubble filled room on the end. Daring not to enter as the floor looked very unsafe, Harry observed the place where his mother had spent her final moments, and he had survived his first brush with death. There was his crib, filled with boards and debris from the roof and back wall. On a hanger hanging from the side of the crib was a tiny set of Quiddich robes. Harry supposed that was his first Halloween costume. He had no memories of that either.

The floors were coated with debris as well, and a thick layer of gray dust blanketed everything. Harry could make out children's books on a shelf, and toys on the floor. A lamp was tipped over and there were scorch marks around it on the floor, and the rubble nearby was charred. The space in front of his crib was clear of rubble, and coated only in dust. The debris was piled around the area, and this was how Harry knew that that was where his mother's body had fallen. When the Order had come to bury them, they would have removed her body from the mess.

There were large spaces from the door to the crib that had broken wood or shingles in them, and Harry noted that that was where Hagrid had stepped to rescue him from the room. He also noticed how close the charred wood was to his crib. He could have lived through Voldemort only to have been killed by fire. But he hadn't been.

He turned and tread carefully back down the stairs, stopping only to take one single dead lily from the vase on the dining room table. There was something about those dead flowers that drew him. He cast a bubble charm around the flower and tucked it into his coat before stepping out of the house and locking the door. Harry Potter was back on his way to face the world. He knew what was waiting for him in that dead silent house, and he would not look back. The dead flower would be his only memento of the visit to that place that hadn't ever really been home.

**A/N: Two weeks 'till freedom folks! Then some updates might appear in between my summer travels! See y'all soon & please review!**

**~Harmony**


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